


Could have been

by Haely_Potter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Family, Ficlets, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:18:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haely_Potter/pseuds/Haely_Potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa's relationships with her brothers</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. True Knight

**Author's Note:**

> We know about Sansa and Arya's rocky relationship but not nearly anything about her relationships with her brothers because they were separated so early in the books and TV series. So these drabbles are my possible scenarios.  
> Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones

It is his first week as a member of the Kingsguard and Bran can’t believe he’s finally here, guarding King Joffrey and his sister, Queen Sansa, and little Prince Eddard.

It has been eight years since King Robert visited Winterfell and Bran rode on a hunt for the first time. He’d been planning on climbing the Broken Tower but father had asked if he’d rather ride with the hunting party and Bran simply couldn’t refuse. Three years later Sansa had married Prince Joffrey and been elevated two years later to Queen when King Robert died on a hunt. Two years into the marriage she’d birthed Prince Eddard with Tully red hair and Lannister green eyes.

And now here he was, on Sansa’s insistent, the second youngest member of the Kingsguard at sixteen, guarding his sister’s door.

But what he was hearing didn’t sound like the happy marriage Sansa and Joffrey presented for the court. In fact, Sansa sounded like she was in pain.

Bran glanced around the hallway to make sure he is alone, that most people are already in their own bed, before cracking the door open.

The scene in front of him was one from his worst nightmares: Sansa was on the bed on her stomach, hands and feet tied to the bed posts, shouting into the pillow where her face was. Joffrey was standing beside the bed with a belt in his hand, a sadistic smirk on his face as he whipped Sansa’s already streaked back, making welt after welt appear, drawing blood from time to time.

Bran closed his eyes, hoping what he was seeing wasn’t there when he opened them again, but the Old Gods weren’t being generous that day. Father had never told him what to choose when it came to between family, and duty and honor. But then, his mother’s words were _Family, Duty, Honor_ which meant that Family comes first, and really, assassinations happened ever so often.

A plan was already forming in the back of Bran’s mind, one where outwardly he’d keep his honor if Sansa agrees to keep quiet but even if she didn’t, he’d be proud to lose his head to protect his sister.

With that in mind he tiptoes behind his King with his dagger drawn and slits his throat, letting him crumble to the floor. He quickly cleans his blade on Joffrey’s clothes and sheathes it, rushing to open the balcony door. “Guards!” he shouts loudly and rushes to Sansa’s side. “Guards! The King has been killed!”

Sansa jerks in her restraints when he first shouts, lifting her wet face from the pillow and looks to Joffrey’s still form, a faded spark of hope lighting in them. Then she looks to Bran with a thankful look as he cuts through the restraints on her hands and feet as golden cloaks fill the room.

“I saw them flee through the balcony,” Bran says quickly. “But I didn’t have the time to see their face and I can’t even be sure if it was a man or a woman. Alert the other guards and send someone to check up on Prince Eddard, we can’t be sure if this was a hit on just the King or the entire royal family. I’ll take care of the Queen.” He then wraps his white cloak around his sister’s naked form and lifts her up, carrying her out of the King’s room to her room down the hall.

Sansa clutches him around the neck, her fingers tangling in his hair and Bran knows she can’t be comfortable with his armor pressing into her soft flesh.

“I knew it,” he hears her whisper. “I knew you’d be a true knight.”

Bran wonders what she means by that and doesn’t dare to ask.


	2. Unexpected

It isn’t Robb that comes for her and it isn’t Joffrey’s head they lay by her feet.

It isn’t Arya that comes for her and it isn’t Cersei’s head they lay by her feet.

It isn’t mother. They aren’t her uncles. It isn’t her great-uncle. They aren’t her father’s bannermen.

But they do lay a head by her feet. Or more specifically, five heads.

One she recognizes instantly. She has been calling him father for the past five years.

The other is harder to recognize with the often broken nose and missing teeth but it is the man she had once believed her brother.

Of the three others she has only heard of.

The third, old and bald, is the one that broke guest right, killing her mother and brother.

The fourth one betrayed her brother, the man he’d proclaimed King.

And the final supposedly married her sister. She spits on him.

She looks up to the man on the horse. He is a young man, yes, but a man grown non-the-less. His blue eyes are now more blue-green than the summer sky blue they were when she last saw him. His red hair is now darker and his skin whiter from the lack of sun.

She turns to look at the other rider. He has baby blue eyes and a lighter red hair, more like her own. He is two-and-ten, still a boy, his eyes wild but the sword in his hand dripping blood like a seasoned warrior’s.

The older one offers her his hand in silent question and she takes it without hesitation. He lifts her to sit behind him on the horse and she leans on his broad back, sneaking her arms around his middle, burrowing her face to his shoulder and inhaling his scent that she’d forgotten so long ago.

With that, Sansa Stark rides out of the Gates of the Moon with her brothers, the cripple no one thought worth much and the baby that everyone forgot wasn’t always going to be a child. But now they were the King of Winter and the Boy-King-Beyond-the-Wall and they had come for her.


	3. They are

She practices flirting with Theon of course but it is Robb who teaches her what to expect from men. He is the one who brings her flowers and accepts her favors in mock tournaments and accompanies her to feasts and asks her to dance. She embroiders his clothes when he lets her and sings to him when he asks.

Robb is the one that would fight to death for her.

She listens to Old Nan’s tales with Bran and they share their love of stories, of knights and fair maidens and the scary ones of the Long Night. She pretends she isn’t afraid when Old Nan tells them of White Walkers and Wildlings, letting Bran squeeze her hand that is sweaty with fear. Later they will together deny being afraid but she is the one to who’s bed Bran climbs after a nightmare of the Long Night.

Bran is the one that understands her.

Rickon she babies, he is so young. When he was born she was just eight and yet she wanted to hold him, play with him, learn what to do with babies. Her babying him didn’t end when the novelty of it wore off and while he never mistakenly called her mother, she was the one Rickon mostly came to with his achievements.

Rickon is the one that loves her unconditionally.

In the end Robb died trying to get her back.

In the end Bran lost his legs and with those, he lost his love of stories of knights. When Sansa meets him again, he is an old man in a young man’s body, telling her true stories of the Long Night and heroes forgotten by everyone but the trees.

In the end Rickon lost his family and when Sansa meets him again, a young man of four-and-ten, he asks her who she is, looking at her with hostile eyes, standing between her and Bran, protecting their cripple brother, their cripple King.

Jon Snow was the one of her brothers she didn’t know, had never wanted to know, and in the end he is the one she falls in love with, his countenance so similar to her father, his uncle, that he makes her feel safe, safer than she has felt since her father’s arrest.


End file.
